Wrapping Up

It has again been a busy few days and the internet has been a hassle.  If there has been anything disappointing about Ireland, it has been the inaccessibility and slow speed of the internet.  I had been led to believe that Europe was ahead of us in terms of both availability and speed, but that has not been the case.  It may just be the places we have been staying.  At any rate we are not here for the internet connections, so "no problem"  (one of the favorite saying here).  Which leads me to thinking about the Irish accent of English.  We had a tour bus driver who ended most sentences with "itself", as in "There is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing, itself"  Sort of like the Canadians put an "eh?" at the end of a sentence.  Then there was the tour of the Isle Of Man by Phillip McCallen.  He kept referring to "Air Pacs" as reference points for the riders on the roads.  I thought he was talking about the crash cushions that are put against the walls, trees and telephone poles along the route.  He would talk about "looking for the air pacs".  It wasn't until the end of the tour that I realized he was talking about the "apex" of a turn.

No "th" in the language either, so eight thirty becomes "eight dirty". 

At any rate, tomorrow we head for home.  It has been a fabulous trip.  I don't look forward to the flight back, or the amount of work it will take to catch up with things around the house, but we will get through it, and I have done the visit to the TT, a trip of a lifetime.  I do look forward to getting back on my own bikes.......all of them, both motorized and not. 

I will try to summarize the highlights of the past three days with some pics:

Thatched roof cottages in the village of Adair

Desmond Castle outside Adair

Our very modern apartment in Galway

There has to be thousands of miles of rock walls in Ireland.  This is a type of "dry stone" wall made without mortar.  This one has vertically stacked rocks, but many are horizontal or even a mix.

We took an all day bus tour to the cliffs of Moher.  Spectacular scenery: 



A motorized two-wheeler of a different kind.  There was evidently an organized tour of  these things. 

The Irish used to heat and cook with peat, or what they call "turf".  They cut the peat out of bogs and dry it. 

It becomes quite light and waterproof after it has dried.  They still use it, but it is a non-renewable resource so there is some effort to preserve some of the bogs.  Also, we were told that the last few years have been so rainy that it is hard to get it to dry.  There still seemed many miles of bogs. 

After we left Galway we headed for Kylemore Abby and walled gardens.  At last Carolyn got to visit one of the gardens that were on her list of 'must see' items.  There had been another one, but it was closed due to labor problems.  Here is a pic from the Kylemore garden:

And here is the Abby itself:

On our way to our next two nights lodging we passed many sheep, some of them on the road itself.  Most were obviously relatives of Shawn:

The roads are really narrow and curvy and usually lined on both side with rock wall.  Karen is often startled when it looks like Jon is getting too close to a wall or parked vehicle on the left, but Jon says he feels he is hanging over the center line on his right.  These roads often have a speed limit of  100 kph (62 mph), and it seems almost impossible to go that fast. 





Monday night we arrived at Ballynahinch castle, where we are now.  It is first rate:

Kicking back in the lounge

Today we took a three hour guided walk around the 300 acres of the grounds of the "castle":



And had a final fish and chips with a Guiness at a small village nearby:



Right now we are waiting for dinner after which it will be time to pack and get ready to end this "trip of a lifetime".  I have nothing left on my bucket list except riding the Washington Backcountry Discovery Route, which I hope to do this summer.